Worm Attack Set for 1/5/2006
A new variant of the Sober worm has been detected recently by Verisign's cyber intelligence center. The worm is expected to launch an email attack on January 5th, 2006 (the 87th anniversary of the Nazi party). Emails launched during the attack are expected to have subject lines that relate to FBI or CIA.
The obvious remedy to this worm, as well as others, is to make sure the Antivirus programs and security patches are updated on all systems. In addition, creating a contact in each address book with "!!!!!!!!!!!" as the email address might prevent the worm from spreading. Some worms/viruses don't have the proper error handling when an invalid email address is encountered. By having the first email address in an address book be invalid, it may generate an error and prevent the worm from spreading. Although this is not a guarantee, it's definitely cheap insurance.
For more info on the worm, visit http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,106848,00.html?source=NLT_AM&nid=106848
The obvious remedy to this worm, as well as others, is to make sure the Antivirus programs and security patches are updated on all systems. In addition, creating a contact in each address book with "!!!!!!!!!!!" as the email address might prevent the worm from spreading. Some worms/viruses don't have the proper error handling when an invalid email address is encountered. By having the first email address in an address book be invalid, it may generate an error and prevent the worm from spreading. Although this is not a guarantee, it's definitely cheap insurance.
For more info on the worm, visit http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,106848,00.html?source=NLT_AM&nid=106848
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